Andalusia

Two coasts that share nothing. The Costa del Sol is resort Spain at full volume, and Málaga — the one part of it worth a trip — is a city rather than a beach. The Costa de la Luz runs from Tarifa west to Huelva: Atlantic wind, enormous sand, cheap fried fish, and almost no high-rise building. If you want to end a city trip with a beach, go west, not east.

Cádiz and the Atlantic: La Caleta inside the city, Bolonia and Zahara de los Atunes for dune-backed sand, La Barrosa for a family beach with every facility. The Cabo de Gata coves, Mónsul and the Genoveses, are the best swimming in the region — but they are in Almería, they need a car, and they are a long way from everything else on this page.

Andalusia eats standing at a bar. Cádiz and Seville own fried fish; Córdoba owns salmorejo and rabo de toro; Granada still hands you a free tapa with every drink, which no other Spanish city of its size does. Add jamón ibérico from the Huelva sierra and a glass of fino in Jerez and the region's case is made.

Nowhere else in Europe concentrates this much of the medieval Islamic world in one region: the Alhambra and the Generalife, the Mezquita in Córdoba, Seville's Alcázar and Giralda, and Madinat al-Zahra, which most visitors skip and shouldn't. Roman Spain is here too, at Itálica and Baelo Claudia. Give history three days, not one.

Better than most of Spain. The Seville–Córdoba–Granada corridor is fast rail, Málaga's airport feeds the whole coast, and Cádiz, Jerez and Ronda all have stations. The white towns, the Cabo de Gata and the Huelva beaches do not — those are car trips, and pretending otherwise costs you whole days.

A car buys the reason to come back: the Pueblos Blancos loop through Ronda, Grazalema and Zahara de la Sierra, the Cabo de Gata, the Alpujarras, and the sherry triangle at your own pace. Use it between cities, not inside them. Parking in Seville and Granada is expensive and both old towns are walkable.

March to May, then October into early November. Semana Santa and the Feria de Abril are the best and most expensive weeks in Seville, and rooms there are booked a year out. Winter is mild, cheap and quiet, with snow on the Sierra Nevada above Granada.

Inland Andalusia in July and August, when Seville and Córdoba go past 40°C and the cities move to midnight. August on the Costa del Sol, when Spanish holidays and northern European school holidays collide. And any itinerary that treats Seville and Granada as neighbours — they are 250 km apart and the train takes two and a half hours.